


Casket Nails

by MarcoFro5



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28886784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcoFro5/pseuds/MarcoFro5
Summary: It feels good to be bad... Assemble a team of the world's most dangerous, incarcerated parahumans and send them off on missions to defeat enigmatic, insuperable villain. Warden Leader Cinereal has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren't picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the team resolve to die trying, or decide it's every woman for herself?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Casket Nails

Eric spoke up from behind her, interrupting the idle chatter in the boardroom. His words were practiced, ripped straight from the script she’d prepared for him.

“What if Alexandria actually was mastered by the Simurgh?”

Chevalier nearly choked on his water. Others in the room had similar reactions, staring at him in disbelief.

“What if one of the most powerful capes to ever live had decided to fly down, rip off the roof of this building, and kill everyone one by one. Who would have stopped her?”

She stood up while the attention was on him, making her way to the front of the room as he continued.

“We have contingency plans for nukes left on Earth Bet, anthrax in the aid from Shin and Chiet, Acidbath’s remains in our water supplies,” he said. “She’s long gone, but what happens if the next Alexandria becomes a real terrorist. If one of you turned against us? Cinereal has a plan.”

Eric stepped back into the shadows of the room, relinquishing the spotlight. She didn’t have to put any effort into her posture, stance as firm as her voice.

“I want to put together a team of very bad people who I think can do some good.”

“Not this again, Cinereal,” Legend said, pushing away the thick manila folder in front of him. “We’re not putting monsters back on the street under a Wardens banner.”

“Not unless they’re one of the ones in this room, I agree,” she said, letting the room decide if that was a shot at him or the ghost beside him with the living and breathing kill count. “We run them covertly, non-attributed.”

“Can I ask why you brought that intern for this?” Topflight chimed in, casually flipping through the folder of files.

“This proposal is a need-to-know basis and all you need to know is he works for me.”

She cleared her throat, shifting the attention back to what actually mattered.

“The next war will be fought with these capes, either for us or against us. We personally can’t go after the likes of Teacher or Goddess or the Fallen, not with the risk involved. These individuals can.”

“Using capes as pawns is the exact kind of thing we’re trying to avoid after everything that happened,” Chevalier said, giving Eric a look before saying anything further.

“They’re better than pawns,” Cinereal said.

“I’m for it,” Valkyrie spoke up. “I can’t say that they all deserve second chances, but I know for a fact that I didn’t deserve mine. What are your plans if they go rogue ?”

“Yeah, what if they turn around as soon as you take the cuffs out and,” Miss Militia paused to read it directly from the file, “engulf people in a blast of dark, screaming destruction that surpasses most invulnerabilities.”

“They’ll have a handler,” Cinereal explained. “Unaffiliated from us, but in our pocket in a sense. Easy to take the fall if things go sour.”

Exhaustion from the mission an hour earlier was clear on Chevalier’s face. She’d caught him on a bad day. Good. The city was a lost cause and every fight seemed to affirm that. Pussyfooting around the biggest threats to survival was a mistake, but this strike force was her way around it. If they were to come back from the end of everything, they’d need everyone.

“Who did you have in mind?” Chevalier asked, leaning forward in his chair.

***

Victoria threw the medicine ball like it stole something, worrying that she dented the wall it collided with. The satisfying burn in her bicep cast that worry aside. She’d worn herself out to the point that it was hard not to just fly over and retrieve the ball. It’s not like anyone would care, the gym was mostly empty this late at night and she was tucked into a corner lined with mats. Still, she came here for a final chance at squeezing some sort of progress out of a long day.

She got a better look at herself in the gym mirror after walking over. A day of striking out with three different hero teams hung heavy on her, giving her a case of resting bitch face she really didn’t care to correct. Her hair tie was pulling its weight at least, hair choked into a ponytail that clung to her sweaty neck and shoulders. Maybe it was time for a cut, although imagining that in the mirror immediately turned her off to the idea. There was no way a pixie cut was for her and even a few inches off would have her dangerously close to her mother’s. Victoria mulled possible changes in style as she got down on the ground, rolling the ball under her so that it was level with her chest so she could use it for pushups.

Victoria maintained a staring match with the wall socket to get through each rep, uncomfortable tightness in her triceps making itself known. The fight with Lord of Loss still made each movement a chore. It was partly why she wished the interviews with Foresight or Auzure had gone differently, an opportunity for more of a backseat role that didn’t leave her battered each and every night. But Victoria was like a shark, the patrol block keeping her moving and out of the deep end. Fume Hood’s shooting was like literal blood in the water, the villains’ nonchalant escape leaving a bad taste in her mouth. She’d done the best she could with the hand she was dealt at the time and that frustrated her most. Unfinished business never sat well with her, not when the assholes got to carry on while people like Fume Hood trying to actually make a difference were in a hospital room.

Fuck that. She’d spent too long on the sidelines, watching the world fall apart through crummy televisions and whatever news she could get her hands on in the hospital. There was some extra force in her pushups, the medicine ball stressing beneath her to the point that she had to ease up. Victoria got on her feet and nearly jumped out of her shoes from a guy standing directly behind her in the mirror’s reflection.   
  
He seemed amused at her reaction, a sharp smile carved on his face while staring at her. Her discomfort was doubled by just how close he was behind her. A tank top with a Nilles University logo hung off his shoulders, sleeves cut so low that she could crane her neck to see all of his torso if she wanted to. She didn’t.

“Can I help you?” she asked, turning around to face him. He was admittedly attractive, like a spartan or caveman had stumbled through time and fell in love with pilates. Rugged features clashed with a clean look, his large nose sitting above a row of white teeth.

“Absolutely,” he said, smile somehow widening further and his gaze wandering. She rolled her eyes and started to walk past him.

“Victoria Dallon, right?” he said, pointing a finger at her with feigned confusion. “I’m pretty sure you’re who I’m after, I’m just not certain on how you like to be referred to these days. Vic? Tori? Glory...Woman?”

“Victoria,” she said, shooting him daggers. “Am I supposed to know who you are?”

“Eric Kingston,” he said, the name like a shallow stab in her chest, reminding her of her late cousin. The stupid way he extended a hand out for a handshake brought her back to reality in this sweaty gym. She spared him the awkward and damp exchange, crossing her arms and cocking an eyebrow to challenge whatever swagger he was trying to impress her with. “Cinereal sent me.”

Despite herself, her eyes widened a bit at that. Cinereal was far from small potatoes, one of the high-ranking leaders in the Protectorate who slotted in with the Wardens after the world ended. It wasn’t surprising that she had some sort of assistant, but from the horror stories Victoria heard during her short stint with the Wards, she was surprised that this guy was her choice of representation.

“She sent you to prowl around gyms for me?”

“I wouldn’t call it prowling,” he said with a laugh. “Recruitment.”   
  
“Not interested,” she said. “I respect the work the Wardens have done with setting up the infrastructure and framework for other cape teams, but I’m not looking to be a cog in the system. No offense.”

“All’s good.” He raised both hands up in a “none taken” gesture with a half shrug, that smile still plastered on his face. “Benefits of being a cape, I suppose, having that freedom. I gotta network to get work, but you probably don’t know much about that.”

His tone was barbed and he continued before she could bite back.

“Regardless, I was sent by Cinereal, not the Wardens.”

Victoria cycled her wrist for him to hurry up and get to the point, doing her best to deny him from seeing her actual interest in the clarification.

“Long story short, there’s a contingent of capes and staff heading out west. Auzure is loaning Spell and some cape with portal powers-”

“Kirin White,” she informed him, resisting the urge to correct him on how Kirin used markers and not portals. Kirin White battled back from the attack on Kyushu only to lose everything all over again during Gold Morning. It was a name she looked into earlier this morning on the off-chance he’d conduct her interview with Auzure, but she didn’t end up being that lucky.

“Right, right,” Eric said. “They’re the only ones going temporarily, the rest will be there long term. It’s some gold rush, Oregon trail, type stuff but I can see the appeal. Fresh starts and all that. Anyway, the Wardens are still working on the roster of who will head that way and Cinereal has a bit of sway.”

Victoria remembered the many vaccines needed to join the patrol block. Despite the similarities to Bet, they were still strangers to Gimel and the first winter had been so brutal in part because people had to fight new illnesses for the very first time. She didn’t need to know whatever fucked-up bugs and plants were deep in the Gimelian wilderness to know she wanted no part of it.

“You can tell her thanks, but that’s not for me,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, laughing, “no, no, no. I’m sure you would be more than helpful fighting bears or using a redwood like a baseball bat, but no. Cinereal is helping with the manifest, but it’s for capes and people who would be useful.”

Victoria didn’t miss his distinction between parahuman and non-parahuman for the second time in less than a minutes. Every word out of his mouth gave her a clearer and clearer picture of who he was and he seemed to almost take pride in it. Maybe that’s how he managed, using unabashed condescension to bridge that gap between himself and the capes around him. Or maybe this was about her being more than just a cape. He hardly hid his interest in her top and she was pretty sure it wasn’t because of the heather gray print. 

“How about you tie the laces on your running shoes so you can get to the fucking point.”

“I figured you’d be more interested,” he said. “The trip west will be a fresh start for a lot of people, but that won’t be the case for everyone. It’ll be dangerous for sure and even if they get set up there’s no guarantee it’ll end up well.”

“If I’m not in the running, why do you keep going on about it?”

“Sorry,” he said, “Given your file, I thought you would have picked up on it by now. With the right reasoning, Cinereal can get Warden-affiliated capes a one-way ticket away from the city. Those good at construction. Agriculture. Medicine.”

Victoria connected the dots as the freckled face forced its way into her mind, curly hair draping past round cheeks before she could fully dispel it and focus on what exactly he was proposing. Amy was a fucking problem, a ticking time bomb that couldn’t be defused, only supervised to help mitigate the damage. She’d told Jessica as much, urging her to see if any therapists were available to keep her in check. The idea of having Amy completely cut out of her life and struggling in some tick-infested forest was admittedly cathartic. But sending her out in the wilderness alone and stressed would lead to disaster, Victoria was sure of that. She was less sure though if she could handle knowing that she had some part in Amy potentially doing something much worse than what happened to her. If that tree fell in the forest, would it keep her up at night?

“I’m interested,” Victoria admitted, “but I also have questions.”

“Don’t waste them on me,” Eric said, already handing out a business card.

It wasn’t laminate but was slicker than what she expected once she grabbed it from him. The background was light gray, the material like a cross between gloss and whatever was used on scratch-off tickets. It was detailed enough that she didn’t expect Cinereal was the one who designed it.

“She’ll be in her office or around it for most of tomorrow and can get into the plan with you or questions or whatever,” he continued, already turning to leave.”Call like an hour before to give a heads up, she’s not exactly a fan of surprises.”

“I assume you know what she’s wanting me for?” Victoria asked. “This all seems pretty elaborate for a meeting.”

“Yeah, but if I say it wrong, she’ll have my head. Just show up tomorrow and you’ll get the rundown. If you can make it, call. If you can’t, definitely call. Easy enough.”

There were a thousand very different words she could think of to describe a meeting with Cinereal. She turned the card over a few times in her hand. Eric was already halfway across the gym before he turned back around to face her.

“Oh,” he called out. “She’s pretty excited about this. It might be hard to tell when you meet her, but she is. Don’t disappoint her or it will be a hassle for the both of us.”

With that, he threw a hand in the air in farewell and left her to stew in sweat and thought. Tomorrow really was a tight turn around for her but it wasn’t like she had anything to do other than possibly researching some of the more under the radar teams in the city. She enjoyed the mentoring aspects when working with the patrol block. It made her useful and like she was making some sort of headway forward. That could translate through taking a leadership role at a smaller team, but she wanted to spend her nights doing more than just keeping a few blocks safe. 

Using some strength, Victoria used her foot to roll the medicine ball towards her and then up so she could catch it. Victoria ran her thumb across Cinereal’s textured business card before tucking it in the zippered pocket on her thigh and heading towards a weight bench. For better or worse, she’d at least hear Cinereal out tomorrow about whatever this recruitment was supposed to be. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was incredibly unprepared for whatever was headed her way


End file.
